Alex Hagan shops at four grocery stores. Not because he’s picky about his food or on the hunt for a specific product, but because he’s looking for the lowest prices.
Hagan is one of 2,000 unionized graduate student workers at the University of Illinois Chicago on strike this week after bargaining with administrators for a year and failing to reach a contract.
“I’ve been unable to pay my car insurance,” Hagan said at a rally Tuesday on UIC’s campus. “I know for a fact that lots of students here have been struggling to pay rent, have been forced to leave where they’re living.”
The Graduate Employees Organization, the union representing UIC’s graduate workers, began their strike on Monday after they say negotiations grew contentious with UIC management on key contract issues, including wages and health insurance.
The union also wants a guarantee that artificial intelligence won’t be used in place of union labor and more protections and support for international workers as immigration enforcement remains aggressive under the Trump administration.
Workers held signs at the rally reading “We can’t research if we can’t pay rent,” and “UIC works because we do.”
Classes are continuing while the union is on strike, and the university said it will “minimize the disruption of instruction, meet course objectives and ensure timely grading.”
Graduate workers at UIC teach classes and conduct research, and they make a minimum of $24,200 for a nine-month contract with no guaranteed summer employment. They are generally expected to work around 20 hours per week, but union outreach chair Macy Miller said most graduate workers find their work can’t be done in that amount of time. Many teach their own classes without a faculty professor.
The university has offered a 2% raise in the first year of the graduate workers’ contract, a UIC spokesperson said.
But graduate workers say that isn’t enough and UIC should be on par with other universities in the area that pay their graduate workers more. The union’s most recent proposal was $38,000 for a nine-month contract, according to Miller, who works in the university’s sociology department.
“They continue to insist, including in an email that was sent out to the whole campus this week, that that demand is completely ridiculous and completely unaffordable,” Miller said.
Miller said the union had backed off of its initial demand for $60,000, which the union says would have offered workers a living wage according to calculations by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Hagan, who teaches undergraduates in the criminology department, is currently making roughly $24,000 for around 20 hours of work per week, including class prep, teaching and grading. But he made the same amount of money last year, when he taught two classes of his own and was working closer to 35 to 40 hours per week.
Private colleges in the area pay graduate workers nearly double that, with Northwestern University’s salary floor at $45,000 per year and the University of Chicago paying graduate workers a minimum of $47,741 per year. Union members say their wages should be comparable to those schools because they’re in the same geographic area and though UIC is a public university, it’s also a top research university.
Miller said most union members can’t get another job to supplement their income because their schedules are filled between teaching or research and their own classes.
The school said in a statement that graduate workers are valued and administrators are confident they can reach an agreement.
“We are committed to good-faith bargaining that will provide a fair contract to our graduate assistants while remaining fiscally responsible to the university at large,” the university said in the statement.
The union and administrators have met for 29 bargaining sessions in the last year, with two more scheduled for Tuesday. Six negotiating sessions involved a federal mediator, who is typically called in to facilitate bargaining and try to avoid work stoppages.
UIC graduate workers use a program called CampusCare for health insurance, which only provides care through the UI Health system. It has dozens of medical centers in the Chicago area, but they’re mostly on the South Side. Organizers said the premiums are too high for “subpar coverage” and location limitations. They want lower premiums and more comprehensive plans that cover gender-affirming care, reproductive care and immunizations.
UIC graduate workers also want the university to protect international student workers by refusing to allow federal immigration agents on campus. During Operation Midway Blitz last fall, agents detained thousands of people in the Chicago area, including near UIC. Organizers want the university to expand access to immigration know-your-rights training and boost legal and financial aid for international workers.
Grad workers also pushed for a guarantee that their labor won’t be replaced by AI programs.
Labor unions within and outside of higher education have grappled with how to negotiate the role of AI in their workplaces, and many have pushed for guardrails against using AI to do certain kinds of work, like conducting performance reviews.